The cover of the Chinese version of The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat published in Taiwan.台灣出版的《變態王子與不笑貓二》中文版的封面。

Photo: Yu Jui-jen, Liberty Times照片：自由時報記者余瑞仁

After reading a Chinese translation of a Japanese light novel, a 22-year-old man from Taoyuan County, surnamed Wu, went on his blog to criticize the allegedly poor translation, reprehending it by saying that “anyone who reads this translation will go insane,” and telling the translator to give up his vocation immediately. After being informed of the situation, the translator, surnamed Huang, decided to take Wu to court. Wu was unable to read aloud from the original Japanese book during the hearing when the prosecutor asked him to do so, so the prosecutor said that he was not proficient enough in Japanese to ascertain whether the translation was accurate. On May 9, Wu was brought up on libel charges.

According to the prosecutor’s investigation, Wu purchased the second installment of The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat, translated by Huang and published by Sharp Point Publishing. After reading the book, Wu went on a blogging Web site three times to post ill-intended comments that were highly critical of the translation for its alleged plethora of mistakes, saying that “the indiscriminate translation lacks any sense of unity,” and asking whether it was “translated using Google Translate.”

During the prosecutor’s investigation, Wu admitted that he had gone online to criticize the translation, claiming to have reached an intermediate reading level after studying Japanese for five years, and going on to point out 122 alleged mistakes in the translation, which caused him to feel dissatisfied with the experience of reading the book and subsequently go online to post the comments.